• FINE FOCUS, VOL. 3 (2)

BARBARA STEDMAN, Ph.D.
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL AND 
INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIPS
BALL STATE UNIVERSITY

HOW TO WRITE 
A GOOD 
RECOMMENDATION 
LETTER

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    • FINE FOCUS, VOL. 3 (2)

In my work as the Director of National and 
International Scholarships at Ball State University, 
I see dozens of letters of recommendation each 
year, the vast majority of them written by faculty.  
Over the past decade I’ve learned that some 
faculty members may view writing a letter of 
recommendation as a burden, as an interruption 
to their own research agendas or other activities 
they consider more important than supporting a 
student’s application.  These recommenders may 
dash off a letter in 15 minutes, using the same 
trusty boilerplate that they’ve used for a hundred 
other students. 

Thankfully, though, I’ve learned that most of 
our faculty view letter-writing as a privilege, 
as an important way to help advance a student’s 
academic and professional careers.  These letter-
writers easily spend an hour or more crafting 
and editing a letter, and these are typically the 
instructors who are asked again and again to 
provide letters for students’ applications for 
scholarships, internships, and graduate school.  

From the students’ perspective, asking for 
letters of recommendation may seem like a 
crapshoot: letters are the one component of an 
application that isn’t under their control, and it 
typically remains unseen, the content unknown.   
When the competition for a national scholarship 
is especially fierce, however, a strong letter can be 
the factor that ultimately determines a student’s 
chances of success.  

In the following pages I offer some general 
advice for writing strong, persuasive letters of 
recommendation for scholarship applications 
in general, along with some specific advice for 
STEM-based scholarship programs, particularly 
the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and NSF 
Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRF)1, two 
of the most important and visible scholarships 
available to STEM students in the U.S. 

1)  TAILOR EACH LETTER 
ACCORDING TO THE SPECIFIC 
CRITERIA OF A GIVEN 
SCHOLARSHIP.

Resist the urge to rely on your go-to 
boilerplate when writing a letter for a major 
scholarship competition, and don’t simply change 
the name of the scholarship when recommending 
the same student for more than one competition.  
The applicant should provide you with a list of 
the criteria for a given scholarship competition; 
if that hasn’t happened, ask the student for 
the criteria or go to the scholarship program’s 
website, where you may find overt guidelines and 
advice for letter-writers.

For STEM-based scholarships, research 
experience and future potential in research are 
often the most important criteria.  Goldwater 
Scholarship applicants, for example, are explicitly 
advised to solicit letter-writers who can 
discuss their “ability, interest, and experience in 
conducting research.”   Recommenders should 
therefore focus much of their attention on past 
research experiences, whether in the lab or the 
field, and should also comment on an applicant’s 
relevant personal traits:  “the motivation, creative 
thought, stamina, and ability to collaborate that are 
characteristics of those successfully practicing” in 
STEM research.

For the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, 
research experience and potential – including 
the feasibility and significance of the applicant’s 
Graduate Research Plan Statement (one of 
two essays submitted with the application) 
– should again be focal points in a letter of 
recommendation.  NSF GRF letter-writers are 
also asked to “include comments on the applicant’s 
potential for contributing to a globally-engaged 

United States science and engineering workforce” 
and to take special care to address the NSF merit 
review criteria – i.e., the Intellectual Merit and 
Broader Impacts criteria.   

In addition to providing information about 
the scholarship criteria, applicants should have 
provided you with reminders of their past 
accomplishments and perhaps even a request 
to focus on a particular experience (e.g., “I’d 
appreciate it if you could discuss my leadership 
of the Human Genome Project”).  They may even 
want you to discuss an experience or quality 
that they haven’t had opportunity to elaborate 
on in their part of the application.  And while 
it’s always a good idea for recommenders to 
read essays that applicants have written for a 
scholarship application, doing so is especially 
important for the NSF GRF, as noted above.

2)  DON’T SIMPLY SUMMARIZE 
THE APPLICANT’S ACTIVITIES 
AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS; 
INTERPRET AND EVALUATE 
THEM.  

Many letter-writers believe that eloquently 
paraphrasing a student’s résumé is useful and 
persuasive.  It isn’t.  Students already will have 
provided the content of their résumés in the 
application, so restating that same information 
in your letter provides no new information for 
the reviewers. 

Instead, bring your knowledge and experience 
to bear upon your evaluation of this student, to 
help the readers understand what the applicant’s 
activities and accomplishments mean, perhaps in 
the context of other outstanding students.  How 
does this student stand out from the crowd of 
other brilliant, visionary, accomplished students 
you’ve known and worked with?  Sometimes 
numbers are useful in making that case.  For 
example, stating that a student is in the top 1% of 
all undergraduates you’ve taught over a 30-year 
teaching career conveys a powerful message.  Or 

favorably comparing the applicant to a previous 
student who went on to an illustrious research 
career can be useful, too.

Joe Schall, author of Writing Letters of 
Recommendation, states that good letter-writers 
“invite us to imagine ourselves in the presence 
of the student” and help us to “know the 
candidate well, in fact to admire the student.”  In 
creating this “invitation,” consider what kind of 
impressions the student has made on other faculty 
in your department or on other students; you 
may want to quote one or two of them.  

Even while inviting readers to admire the 
student, however, avoid grandiose hyperbole.   
Some scholarship review committees don’t 
even like to read the word “perfect” in a letter 
of recommendation (i.e., “Jane Smith is a perfect 
candidate for the ___ Scholarship”).  Readers 
don’t expect any candidate to be perfect and 
without flaws – which raises the question of 
addressing failures and weaknesses in a letter 
of recommendation.  Should you include 
them?   If the student has significant weaknesses 
and unaddressed failures, you may first need 
to reconsider whether you feel comfortable 
providing a letter for him or her.

In general, however, you should discuss 
failures if they have led to positive growth or if 
they help explain a gap or weakness in a student’s 
record.  The Goldwater Foundation even offers 
this specific advice to recommenders:  “If there 
are any special circumstances or challenges the 
student has had to face that have negatively 
affected the student’s performance or that the 
student has faced and has successfully addressed 
and performed well in spite of these challenges, 
please discuss these in your letter.”  I would 
simply add the caveat that if such challenges are 
personal in nature, ask the student if you may 
mention them in your letter.

3)  SUPPORT YOUR POINTS 
WITH SPECIFIC, ILLUSTRATIVE 
DETAILS AND ONE OR MORE 

1. The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship is aimed at identifying and supporting sophomores and juniors 
who will become the next generation of our nation’s top STEM researchers. The NSF Graduate Research 
Fellowship provides three years of generous support to outstanding graduate students (including those who 
will enter their first year of graduate school) in a wide range of the sciences, including social sciences. 
Both programs are federally sponsored and funded.

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    • FINE FOCUS, VOL. 3 (2)

PERSONAL ANECDOTES.
Don’t leave your readers asking “How?” or “In 

what way?”  If you say a student has tremendous 
initiative, describe an incident in which he or she 
demonstrated that initiative in a meaningful way.  
Flesh out evaluative statements – “Jane uses both 
her senses and her intuition well in the lab” – by 
offering an anecdote in which you saw Jane’s 
senses and intuition at work.  Help the readers 
experience that scene through engaging description; 
convey the surprise and pleasure you experienced 
when you first saw her talents in action.  

You should also show readers that you know 
this student as more than simply a good test-taker 
or lab worker.   Identify noteworthy character 
traits, adopt a warm and personal tone in your 
writing – there’s no need to refer to the student 
as “Miss” or “Mr.” – and be sure to employ 
memorable details.  After the scholarship review 
committee members have finished reading 
several dozen application packets, what will they 
remember from your letter?   The more that your 
voice comes through, the more compelling your 
letter will be.

4)  CONSIDER THE 
STRUCTURE, LENGTH, AND 
OTHER FORMATTING DETAILS.  
Unless you are instructed otherwise, I 
recommend the following general guidelines. 

a)  Greeting:   Address the foundation or 
committee, rather than “Dear Sirs,” or “To whom 
it may concern.”

b)  Opening paragraph:
• State what you’re recommending student for.  
• Indicate the length of time and circumstances 

in which you’ve known the student.
• If needed, provide a brief statement of your 

qualifications for evaluating the applicant, but don’t 
make the letter about you; the review committee 
will not care how accomplished you are.

c)  Readability:  
• Don’t go smaller – or larger – than 11 or 12 

point Times New Roman, 10 point Arial, 11 point 

Calibri, or a comparable font and size.  
• Single-space your letter, with adequate 

paragraph breaks.
• Don’t use visual gimmicks.  It’s fine to 

boldface or italicize a few key words, but don’t 
overuse either formatting tool, and don’t use 
“splashy” fonts, in an attempt to draw attention.  
I once had a faculty member put a student’s 
full name in 14-pt. Broadway font throughout 
his letter, thinking that he would help readers 
remember the student’s name.  Yes, the reviewers 
might have remembered the student’s name, but 
not for the right reasons!

d)  Length:  For most scholarships, aim for 
1½ to 2 pages or about 1,000 words.  A one-page 
letter may suggest you have little to say, and 
three pages may try the patience of committee 
members who are reading and evaluating dozens 
of applications.  

Be sure to read the instructions for each 
specific scholarship program, though, as you 
may be given a character, word, or page limit.  
Recommenders for the NSF GRF are limited to 
two pages, and those for Goldwater Scholarship 
are allowed up to three pages.  Other formatting 
guidelines are also specified by each program, too, 
including font options and the width of margins.

e)  Submission protocol:  Because the vast 
majority of scholarship applications are now 
online, you’ll likely be required to copy and 
paste your letter into a text box or to upload 
it as a Word or PDF file.  When copying and 
pasting into a text box, you don’t need to worry 
about letterhead or signature.  When uploading 
a file, though, you’ll usually need to have both 
letterhead and your signature.  

For uploaded letters, you may be given the 
option of submitting a Word document, but I 
recommend going with a PDF instead.  If you 
want to print out your letter and then scan it as a 
PDF, be sure to set your scanner resolution to 300 
dpi or higher; 200 dpi will make the text grainy 
and potentially annoying to your readers.   If you 
have your letterhead and signature saved as a .gif 
or .jpg (or other image file), however, you may 
find it easier to simply insert the letterhead and 

signature into the Word version of your letter and 
then “Save As” a PDF.  

f)  Proofread:  Spell the student’s name and the 
scholarship’s name correctly.  I’ve seen students 
called the wrong name in letters, have their 
names spelled two different ways, identified by 
the wrong pronoun, and recommended for the 
wrong scholarship!   

For online submission of letters, too, be sure 
to preview the letter before hitting “submit,” to 
check for formatting problems created by copying 
and pasting from Word into a text box.  

5)  TRY NEW STRATEGIES FOR 
IMPROVING YOUR LETTERS OF 
RECOMMENDATION.

If you’re not happy with the letters you’ve 
been writing, or if you’ve often found yourself 
at a loss to write a substantive letter for some 
applicants, these strategies might help:

a)  Meet with the student in person, to discuss 
the scholarship and the student’s accomplishments 
and future plans.  Even if the student sends 
you detailed written information, a 20-minute 
conversation may help you come up with 
convincing anecdotes or help clarify what you 
want to focus on in your letter.

b)  Think of a letter of recommendation as a 
rhetorical challenge:  You’re building an argument 
about a student’s intelligence, insight, ambition, 
and potential to have a significant impact on his 
or her field of study, profession, and perhaps 
even society.   You’re also building a persuasive 
argument that this student is a good fit for this 
scholarship.  What do you need to tell the readers 
to convince them of your broad statements about 
the student?   

c)  If you simply feel “stuck” and can’t figure 
out how to write more than half a page about a 
student, try this strategy:   Identity three of the 
student’s qualities that make him or her especially 
well qualified for the scholarship or otherwise 
stand out from the crowd.  Write a paragraph 
or two about each quality, providing supporting 
evidence and at least one anecdote to illustrate 
each point.  While the strategy itself may sound 

formulaic, the results are usually distinctive and 
convincing, allowing the readers to get a clear 
picture of that particular applicant.

6)  BE ETHICAL.
Never ask a student to draft his or her own 

letter of recommendation.  But do ask the student 
to give you written information about the 
scholarship, plus reminders about past papers and 
projects and other relevant accomplishments that 
you’re especially well-qualified to discuss.

If you can’t write the kind of letter that 
will help a student be a strong contender for 
a scholarship – even after trying some of 
the strategies provided here – please say so 
from the start.  Writing an unusually short or 
unenthusiastic letter only hurts the student.

Even though your letter is almost always 
considered confidential by scholarship 
foundations (you’d be alerted to any rare cases 
in which that isn’t the case), and certainly letters 
for the Goldwater Scholarship and NSF GRF are 
kept confidential , you’re welcome to share your 
letter with an applicant if you like.  In fact, you 
may want to fact-check the content of your letter 
or simply let an applicant know how highly he 
or she is regarded.  However, you should never 
comply with a student who asks you to hand 
over your letter without first confirming the 
scholarship application’s protocol.

Writing a strong letter of recommendation 
takes time and careful thought, but for scholarship 
applicants your letter can be the deciding factor 
for a review committee debating between one or 
more equally qualified candidates.  And even for 
those students who may not win a scholarship, 
your letter will likely provide a useful foundation 
for future applications, whether for other 
scholarships, internships, or graduate school.  

The investment of time and energy is 
worth it, so throw out that boilerplate when 
recommendations really matter.  Students will 
be grateful, and you may help provide them 
with an opportunity that will open door after 
door in their academic careers and professional 
futures in science.

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